At the SCC, surgical operations by the “da Vinci” Robotic Surgical System have been conducted since December, 2011. In addition to the cases of removing prostate cancer, which are covered by Japanese public medical insurances, operations for urinary organs, colon and rectum, stomach and lung have been performed by 2 of these robotic surgical systems.
Operations performed by the da Vinci Robotic Surgical System are getting rapidly frequent, because even cases considered as impossible by ESD(endoscopic submucosal dissection) can be handled by the minute robot movements. It helps much about some very difficult cases and turns the impossible into the possible. Also, as it is expected that patients can be back to normal life after the operations as they offer comparatively low invasive potential.
Before a doctor performs a surgical operation by the da Vinci Robotic Surgical System, he/she needs to go through several training sessions recommended by relevant associations, as well as observing actual surgeries performed at a certified observation center. In Japan, there weren’t any certified observation centers in the field of colon and rectum cancer before, so that doctors had to travel all the way to Korea for observations.
In November, 2012, Intuitive Surgical, Inc., U.S.A. certified the SCC as the “case observation center for colon and rectum procedure by the da Vinci Robotic Surgical System,” which was the first certification given in the field in Japan. Now a Japanese doctor doesn’t have to travel to Korea for observing a surgical operation of colon and rectum cancer performed by the da Vinci Robotic Surgical System.
